Tories could cut house prices in in desirable areas in a radical test to spark new building

Under it, every authority will have to calculate how easy it is for young workers to get on the housing ladder by working out their local salary-to-house price ratio.

The average house in Britian now costs 7.8 times the average salary - an all-time record.

And in some areas of the south east, the figure rockets to above 12 times people’s wages.

Mr Javid wants to slap a new automatic legal requirement on councils with ratios that are too high to make them green light thousands more homes, so that a significant increase in housing supply reduces prices over time.

Mr Javid’s test has been debated intensely in No10 for six months over fears it will spark a rebellion from some Tory MPs, The Sun can also reveal.

It could also ignite a dangerous backlash in solid Tory areas as home owners panic about their own houses losing value.

The Cabinet minister branded them refusal “not good enough” and declared that “the era of tolerating such poor, patchy performance is over”.

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Dropped a big hint about his salary ratio test, Mr Javid telling Local Government Association conference: “Where housing is particularly unaffordable, local leaders need to take a long, hard, honest look to see if they are planning for the right number of homes”.

He also slammed some councils for still failing to come up with a local development plan years after they were introduced.

Mr Javid added: “Our aim is simple: to ensure these plans begin life as they should, with an honest, objective assessment of how much housing is required”.

Ministers are working to a private target of seeing 275,000 new homes a year built just to keep up with the soaring population demand – more than 100,000 more than today’s rate.